Greetings from the Best Place on Earth!

I hope everyone had a great long weekend last weekend. Diane and I enjoyed the time. We went to the Saanich Peninsula Fair on Saturday. It was a great time. We looked at the 4-H animals, passed right by the Girl Guides of Canada cookie sales, compared our tomatoes to the winning vegetables and marveled at the various baked goods and homemade wines. It was a lot of fun.

Sunday we went golfing at Ardmore golf course and Diane played the best game of her life. Well, I didn’t golf because I am recovering from a pulled muscle in my back. But I walked the course with Diane’s bag in tow. Offering her my advice on the club selection and angle of the hole, I did my best caddy impersonation. She managed to have a stellar game in spite of all that.

Friday as I was driving home from work and the golden sunlight was filtering down through the trees and the breeze held just a hint of autumn, I did feel like this is the best place on earth. My last day of work with BC Transit was great. My bosses (4 of them) started the day off with Tim Horton’s then a Shark Club lunch, a bouquet of flowers and a card. They presented this to me and told me what a great job I had done and how I was making it really hard for them to miss the girl I was temping for. It was all very, very sweet.

Now on to Diane’s news - She was hired at her Engineering firm as a Mechanical Project Manager with 3 months probation. Two month’s into that probation, one of the Principle Engineers turned in his resignation to go off on his own and start a new company. His role, aside from being a Principle Engineer, was to be the Team Lead for the Mechanical Division. Diane has been offered his position and offered an associate position in the firm, all before she even passed her probation. They have hammered out the contract details and now it is official. This has been very affirming to us in our timing for landing as Permanent Residents. Even though our house is still on the market in Las Vegas and there is always some doubt that creeps into the back of your mind (i.e. Did we leave too soon?), this has been a great affirmation that we are on the right track.

I had an interview yesterday at UVIC for a full time job. I find more and more everyday, how even though Americans and Canadians speak the same language, the differences in meaning and expressions are vast. I frequently ask for translations for things. I know in the interview, there were several phrases that I was not familiar with. I looked them up when I got home and realized that we had just called the process something different in the States. The written test was a challenge for me because the instructions given were not clear in my mind. Small differences in word meanings matter a lot. I think I will write a blog on American to Canadian expression equivalencies. (For example; a camper shell on a truck is called a canopy here. Um-humm is said with a certain inflection here that is hard to describe, accent on the humm part with a little question of interest.) I don’t think I will get the job, but if I do I’m still a little at odds about it because I really like the temping thing. I don’t need the benefits, so the in lieu of pay is even better. We will see how it goes. As my friend from BC Transit says, “It isn’t prison, you can always say no or quit if it does not fit.” I think I would have a feeling prior to taking the job, if it was a good fit or not.

Oh and I had one of my famous dreams last night. The house in Las Vegas sold for asking price. It was done. Severed. Finished. That was a really good dream.

This weekend we will go to the Great Canadian Beer Festival. BC Transit gave out free bus passes for the event if you bought a ticket – so no one drives under the influence. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Now, I'm out to the woods to load and stack firewood for the upcoming winter.